Tube Rolling

I literally just “rolled” my tubes in my ARC pre today. Replaced with new matched and balanced. Definite improvement as, like you, the original tubes had unknown age and duration on them. Can’t wait till the get really burned in. I also installed them without the ARC dampers as well, so I have a tweak to play with in the future... Can’t go wrong starting with a fresh set of tubes...

Hi,
Power tubes when lack dynamics, loose treble and have difficulty in bias, driver tubes when becoming noisy. How fast will power tubes wear? Depends from how hard they are driven in circuit, your speaker and your listening habbits. Always get matched pairs or even better matched quads. When i had my SF Power 2 i liked SED6550C (not Svetlana) best to anything else but i had to replace them every 700hrs.

Look at the getter (the chrome-like coating on the inside of the top end of the glass envelope) of each tube. As the tube is used, that "flash" is burned off.

HI,
Getter is the metal (various shapes) that is connected to a hot electrode and is to collect free gases for tube to work in a vacuum, they are coated and loose some shining with use. The underside top of glass is metal particles (silver colouring) induced when sealing the tube. In power tubes they fade away with use. Driver or signal tubes get hazy marks or spots and a white ring at nipple base.

I replace tubes well before the getter "flashing" gets funky, and often simply because I want to try a different tube...generally the power tubes get the most attention, but my amp has only 2 (single ended pentode) so it's cheap. Preamp tubes seem to last a very long time in my Freya (4 6SN7GTYBs), and there's only one of those in the amp that also lasts...I check tubes by simply replacing one from my pile of new spares.